Ryan Gosling’s Face Scientifically Proven To Make Men Support Feminism

"Hey Girl."

A-lister Ryan Gosling in Drive. Image Icon Film Distribution

We all know that Ryan Gosling is a first class actor. Drive, The Big Short, The Ides of March, he’s been knocking out classics for years now.

But did you know he’s also responsible for boosting men’s support of feminism?

The Tumblr page Feminist Ryan Gosling is an archive of photographs of the A-lister with text overlaid containing feminist messages. You might know it for spawning the famous Gosling “Hey Girl” meme.

As reported by Junkee, Danielle Henderson created the blog back in 2011 to help her memorise the works of gender studies theories she was studying in college.

It took on a different life, however, when University of Saskatchewan PhD students Sarah Sangster and Linzi Williamson put together a study to prove that these memes helped affect men’s feminist beliefs in a positive way.

Their research reportedly used the memes for tests that resulted in men becoming more inclined to endorse radical feminist beliefs as opposed to a group who just saw Gosling photos without text.

Male participants who were shown photos from the Feminist Ryan Gosling ended up being more likely to believe statements like “men use abortion laws and reproductive technology to control women’s lives”.

Their thoughts on the matter were allegedly changed by as much as 10%.

The study, titled The Effect of Ryan Gosling Feminist Memes on Feminist Identification and Endorsement of Feminist Beliefs, also found that “popular internet memes can serve more than an entertainment function in that they can also serve as a persuasive device for relaying ideological information”.

In short, if you want to get a message across quickly and effectively – slap some text over a photo of Ryan Gosling and jobs a good’un.